Into the Ashes

Friday, June 22, 2012

If you ever needed proof that mankind was fundamentally broken, just jump into your motor vehicle of choice and head out onto the open road. I would love, in my next life, to study traffic patterns, because they reveal so much about us - given even a modicum of perceived privacy within our vehicles, we act like animals. Watching people drive right up to the split and then change lanes, knowing full well that it is exactly that behavior that caused the traffic that they were getting around. Our sick fascination with accidents, slowing down to watch others' pain and suffering. Texting, surfing the internet, eating, looking down to change the radio station, all while operating a 4000 lbs piece of machinery. Road rage, yelling and cursing at other drivers in a way we would never dare, were we speaking to them face to face.

And that is what we do when we are still on display for anyone to see. But we're zooming, we're racing, and in our minds, no-one can catch us, no-one can hold us accountable for our actions.

Society, civilization, it's all a lie that we tell ourselves. We pretend we're elevated, that we've dragged ourselves out of the muck, that we have souls. We have no souls. We are talking monkeys, and given the opportunity we'll bare our teeth and scratch and bite each other with savagery that would do our brachiating friends proud.

Friday, June 8, 2012

There are times when you look around at your fellow man, and you have to shake your head and wonder, "How the fuck did we ever manage to climb out of the primordial ooze?"

Take a walk around your local Walmart, drive down any city thoroughfare, watch the news for five minutes, have a conversation with a co-worker. You'll see. We're fucked. As a species, we are doomed to extinction, more than likely by our own hands. We won't need aliens, zombies or an asteroid. We'll take care of our own mess, eventually, probably sooner than later. You see, we can't help ourselves. Look at human behavior as a whole, our inability to plan long term, to act in a less than selfish manner, hell look at how we act on the internet. There's something inside of us that's rotten, and it's eating away at us. Soon there will be nothing left but the rot.

Sam Neill's character in "In the Mouth of Madness" put it best - "Every species can smell it's own extinction.", and boy is it ripe right about now. Our zeitgeist is posititvely brimming with preapocalyptic angst. Zombies are in the news, talk of Mayan calendars are on the tips of our tongues, we're EXCITED by the prospect of our own demise.

I hate my fellow man. I hate the weakness that I see everywhere, the self absorption, the entitlement, the memememememe attitude. I hate the constantly churning masses, writhing and gyrating from one distraction to another, as we barrel towards oblivion. I hate myself, for wasting my time writing about it. And most of all, I hate you, dear reader, for reading this blog instead of getting off your ass and doing something about it.